Thursday April 27, 2023
UN Photo/Fardosa Hussein A mother and her child pass by carcasses of goats and sheep in Luuq, Somalia on 21 March 2022.
MOGADISHU (Xinhua) -- The UN humanitarian agency said Wednesday it used 112.4 million pooled funds from the Somalia Humanitarian Fund (SHF) to tackle severe drought conditions in 2022.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Adam Abdelmoula said the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance and protection rose to 7.8 million in Somalia in 2022 from 5.9 million in 2021.
"Today, Somalia remains in a profound humanitarian crisis because of an unprecedented drought, conflict, high food and water prices, and displacement," Abdelmoula wrote in the SHF annual report 2022.
The SHF is a multi-donor country-based pooled fund established in 2010 to support the timely allocation and disbursement of donor resources to address the most urgent humanitarian needs.
The report showed how the fund was used strategically to address urgent humanitarian needs driven by the most severe drought in 40 years and provided an overview of the SHF's robust management and accountability systems.
Given the scale of humanitarian needs, Abdelmoula encouraged donors to maintain their generous support for the SHF, which is one of the smartest choices to support humanitarian response, not least because of its direct support for local partners and its unique placement within the humanitarian coordination structure.
He lauded donors for increased contributions, from 58.7 million dollars in 2021 to 67 million dollars in 2022.
The UN official said the SHF continued to champion localization in 2022, and 61 percent of funding was directly allocated to national non-governmental organizations, adding that direct implementation through international and national non-governmental partners accounted for 97.5 percent of allocations.